My 2014 Runners Book

Thursday, April 9, 2015

What do you do with your bibs after race day? I save ours, putting them in a manila folder for safe keeping and at the end of the year, I create a photo book (check out my 2013 Runners book). Shutterfly offers free books a few times a year through email offers and I upgrade to the 8x11 size, which is perfect to show of your photo memories and race bibs. This book cost me $14 with shipping included.

Typically, you can put your photo highlights on the left page, along with the name of the event and the date, along with your finishing time then leave the right page blank. The front cover of the book features my favorite pic(s) from the year. I had to get creative with the 2014 book as this year was full of multi-day race challenges and a race weekend in NYC with ASICS.

My 2014 race year started off with the Inaugural runDisney Dopey Challenge. Four races in four days equaled to hundreds of raceday photos. I have been dreaming up this runners book from the day I finished the challenge.

I wanted to dedicate each page to one of the four race days. My Mom ran her first 5K and 10K with me during that weekend so it was extra special picking out the photos for those two pages.

When it came time to build the pages for the half marathon and full marathon, I ran into an issue being I didn't have near as many pics for the half as I did for the full.

The Dopey Challenge took up 6 pages of my book but I was very impressed with the outcome. Seeing all these memories on paper makes me want to sign up for the 2016 challenge. Then sanity takes over and I have to tell myself, one and done (until the anniversary year of course).

Kinda crazy to think there was once a day you could sign up for a runDisney race, the week of the event given how fast they sell out now. I had two bibs from that weekend, the 5K and the Challenge bib.

I decided to have the 5K and 10K on one page each and give two pages to the half marathon being Keri and I had so many photos from that event (we stopped for 90% of the photo opps on course).

I had an epic breakdown during the half marathon portion of the challenge, which you would never know by looking at the pictures.

Breakdown aside, I really enjoyed the Glass Slipper Challenge and would do this one again.

The next race was the Sarasota Half Marathon which I ran the relay with my husband. My ankle was in so much pain for this event that I only took one photo and I was pretty sure my long distance running days were over. In fact, this was the last time I ran anything more than 3 miles until a certain email came over from ASICS.

It was a long 6 months until my next race - the TCS NYC Marathon with ASICS. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be part of such an amazing team and live this experience. ASICS sent me an email over the summer, asking me if I would like to try out a pair of shoes. Being I run in ASICS, the answer was an obvious yes and I looked at it as them saving me $150. Two weeks later, I received another email, inquiring if I would like to be part of the ASICS NYC Marathon bloggers challenge.

Instead of one page of pics from the race, I chose to capture memories from the entire event. It was the best experience of 2014, aside from our wedding.

Here is where I failed in 2014. I lost my TCS NYC Marathon bib after the race. I am so good at keeping all of my bibs, even no-name local events.....and I lost this one! So I have my "mug shot" and left the second page blank, just in case one day it turns up.

The last two pages were dedicated to my husbands 2014 races, the runDisney Walt Disney World Marathon and the Gasparilla Half Marathon.

The back of my books feature my biggest accomplishment of 2014. It was without a doubt completing the Dopey Challenge.